It’s the beginning of a new school year and something magnificent happened during one of my beginning of the year activities. I usually play “Guess My Number” with my class, but decided to do a number talk with the class. I have done this number talk plenty of times during presentations! Or at least you would have think I’ve …
Success or Legacy?
As the first days of school are soon started…my mind has been pondering a thing. What makes a teacher successful? How do we measure our success? Let me back up a bit. At my district, seniors at the high schools are allowed to invite a special guest to their graduation. The special guests lead the graduates onto the football …
An Ode to Math TShirts
An unusual occurrence happened during my session at the Virtual Math Summit (held by Build Math Minds). During my pre-recorded session, many participants were noticing my math shirts. They all wanted to know where they can get some of my math shirts. I’ve been collecting math shirts for my whole career. I don’t just collect any math shirt. They …
Discovering Humanity through Math with Francis Su
During the winter break, I like to catch up with all the good stuff that I didn’t have the time for during my teaching life. I finally had the chance to sit down and listen to a podcast that included Francis Su, a professor of math and writer (His book Mathematics for Human Flourishing is on my bookshelf waiting for me …
What Makes Math a Priority in a District?
I am going to be completely honest. I have been struggling with their vision and the direction my district has been heading. I have worked here since 2001 and never given much thought to where we’ve been headed. But ever since I jumped into the elementary world and been more invested in the math community (#MTBOS) and found like minded …
Guess my number
With a simple string and cards, students play Guess My Number and build their vocabulary and number sense.
Adversity Teaches Life Lessons
This summer I attended CAMT as a featured speaker in San Antonio Texas. The CAMT board had asked me to do a passion piece in addition to my clothesline math sessions. Besides math, what else am I passionate about? An idea had dawned on me. How could I tell my story of breast cancer and all the lessons I learned? …
“Learning Loss”
This new found term “learning loss” has been floating around on media and out of politicians’ mouths for months now. I’m concerned about this term.
One year….
f there was any year that will be the most memorable year in any educators’ careers, I’m guessing that this will be the year. 2020 going into 2021 was/has been a challenge for any teacher.
Percent on a Number Line
Rather than teaching students about the part to whole ratio and making it into a proportion, I was asking them to do word searches to find the clues.